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[Shelby07]

Our company has a fair piece of operations in Mumbai, Gurgaon and Delhi (as well as other cities in India) I have been threatened on several occasions that I'm going - I've managed to dodge the bullet each time. A number of my coworkers have gone and returned with stories similar to yours, Mark.

While I'm avoiding the trip at all costs (primarily because 17 hours of traveling will totally screw up my work), I am very curious. I routinely interact with our partners in India - and am fascinated by their mindset. Is is clearly different than ours.

Good on you!!!

George,

I'd encourage you to take the trip, but be prepared for a totally different reality. Delhi, Mumbai and Gurgaon will be easy to work in, but outside the business centers things are very strange for us. Aside from the obvious stuff mentioned above, the people and the culture are very different. Everything in India is based on making deals, and the ability to position ones self and negotiate is a part of their mindset. Hence, you will never get the full story unless you dig for it, and you'd better be good at it. Never assume anything as you will be wrong 100% of the time. They don't lie, they just don't tell the whole truth, or they bend the truth when convenient. The people verbally fight among themselves, but will rarely do harm to each other (unless you are talking about some of the more extremist groups like the Naxalites or the Docoids (sp?) who are usually not found in the more generally visited areas.) There are several religions, and each person is rooted deeply in their own. The most common language is Hindi, but there are 15 different languages spoken in the country, depending on the area you are in. Just about everyone in the business world speaks English, but be prepared for some very strange sentence structures. The states in India are much more like separate countries. Goods shipped from state to state are required to go through a sort of customs, paperwork is necessary and taxes must be paid. Police walk around with AK-47's and private security guards armed with shotguns sit outside banks and jewelry stores. The dowry system is alive and well, but not talked about to foreigners very much. Honor killings are common and many people defend them. Villagers tend to defend their men no matter what the crime. The government is extremely corrupt and anything can be bought for a price. The cities are very dirty as compared with ours, safety standards are very low and building standards are non existent. They think of George Bush as the devil but they like Americans in general. As a white American male, respect is given, whether it is deserved or not. Yet in spite of all of these things the culture works and people live their lives in a fairly normal way. The first couple of weeks there is an American tendency to think that if they could only be shown the American way (i.e., the "right" way) everything would be better, but of course that isn't the case. Their religion and culture is ingrained in them, and they have had life experiences that we can not imagine.

Sorry for the rambling... I'm doing more of a brain dump here. My mind is still in a transition phase.

EDIT: By the way, I am not knocking or belittling the Indian people. The question was about their mindset. The things I mentioned above are some of the things you need to understand before you can start to understand the culture. The Indian people are really quite friendly and interesting.